


Crossfire

by idoltina



Series: She Lit a Fire [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arson, F/M, Firefighters, Gen, Implied Robin Hood/Maleficent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 19:37:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11721129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idoltina/pseuds/idoltina
Summary: It’s the scream that pierces the night air and causes her smile to falter, and the subsequent siren that echoes through the air as it creeps closer from a distance ends up sounding like a whisper.There’s someone in the building.There’s someone in the building.She’s careful, she is always so, so goddamn careful to make sure her targets are empty, clear of people before gets to work, doesn’t dabble in gasoline or matches or lighters or homemade molotovs until she is absolutely, absolutely certain there’s no one to get caught in the quite literal crossfire.Clearly, she wasn’t careful enough.





	Crossfire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gotatheory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotatheory/gifts).



> **Warnings:** adult language, discussion of previous eating disorders, illegal activities (including arson)

As a general rule, Mal does her best to stay in reasonably decent shape. She works out, but she’s not intense about it, has too many gray memories from her younger years of tape measures and porcelain and mirrors disfigured. Track was the one thing, back then, that straddled the line — something she really, really probably shouldn’t have done, given its propensity for fueling her mindset. But there was also something _safe_ in it, something almost freeing about the sharp snap of the gun echoing up and out into the atmosphere because it was always so much more than just the usually ready-set-go of competition. With each blank bullet that rocketed and ricocheted toward the sky came the burn in her calves, the fire in her lungs and the wind in her hair and for a hundred meters Mal would _fly_ , wings spread wide as she sped, hunted her way toward red, laughing as she’d toe, trip, stumble over the finish line with near-smoke snuffing out of her nostrils.

She can feel that now, in the brisk of night as she takes the stairs two at a time, feet light against steel as she arches, pivots, tiptoes her way up the fire escape diagonally across from her target. Her braid thumps heavily against her collarbone as she climbs, tools of her arsenal jostling around in her backpack but for the two minutes it takes her to approach the rooftop Mal is fifteen all over again, weightless and fleeing and scattering bones along the ground. She can feel her calves starting to give out on her, flames licking her lungs up and in as they flare, scorch, burn toward her throat, so she reaches out both hands for the railings on the last two flights of stairs, leather gripping steel with a stick-pull-release to help propel her up and along the last stretch.

At long last, her feet land gracefully on the rooftop patio, and she’s barely waiting a moment before tugging the cloth away from her mouth, breath punching out of her chest as the fire in her lungs recedes back into embers. She allows herself the half moment to take a deeper breath, gripping at the stitch in her side before she’s stuffing the cloth into her coat pocket and crossing the rooftop toward the opposite corner. Mal rocks up on the balls of her feet in alteration, shaking and stretching her legs so they don’t cramp up, and with her elbows settled against stone, her eyes take in the scene before her, lips curving into a wry smile.

Below and beyond, the world is on fire, and in the sky above, Mallory Eld looks down on destruction with delight.

It’s the scream that pierces the night air and causes her smile to falter, and the subsequent siren that echoes through the air as it creeps closer from a distance ends up sounding like a whisper.

There’s someone in the building.

_There’s someone in the building_.

She’s careful, she is always so, so goddamn careful to make sure her targets are empty, clear of people before gets to work, doesn’t dabble in gasoline or matches or lighters or homemade molotovs until she is absolutely, absolutely certain there’s no one to get caught in the quite literal crossfire.

Clearly, she wasn’t careful enough.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she knows she should move, knows she should get out of here or change position to investigate, but somewhere between her brain and her feet the commands gets caught, crushed under the drumming of her heart in her chest. Through the rising smoke her eyes squint, scan over the side of the building she can still see, gaze flicking from one window to the next as she seeks out the source of the scream.

Fortune, if she can even call it that, favors her with a symphony of screams this time, discordant and displaced and increasingly difficult to discern. Her heart picks up pace, practically wild now as she looks from one end of the building to the other, frantic, until finally, there, on the third floor, she sees a shadow flit from one end of a window to another.

Shit.

Clumsily she digs into her pocket and pulls out the cloth, fingers fumbling as she struggles to fasten it back over her face. Any and all thoughts of potential cramps are gone from her mind now, bones in her legs like ice as she tries not to stumble her way back across the rooftop. She winces a little as the fire escape rattles noisily on her way back down but she can’t care enough to keep her steps light, can’t even spare a second thought. All she can focus on is her feet in front of her as she takes the steps two at a time, trying valiantly not to misstep, trip.

Her shins _ache_ upon impact when she jumps — falls, really, rather ungracefully off of the bottom of the fire escape to the ground, pain reverberating up and catching at her knees. She nearly buckles but manages to stay upright. Carefully, Mal walks over to the wall and shuffles her way down, keeping to the shadows. The snow has melted here, at the base of the building, makes it easy to side-step and slither her way along the side without fear of leaving tracks.

She hesitates, just at the corner, takes a half-breath and then a whole before she peeks around the corner and peers down the long, narrow, dark alleyway.

There’s nothing much unusual down this way, just a set of dumpsters and trash cans beneath opposing garbage chutes and — 

Her eyes narrow to slits as she struggles to discern shapes in the dark, but after a moment her eyes adjust. There, just shy of the other end of the alley, tucked away innocuously along the opposite wall, is a large tarp draped over an awkward, lumpy mass. Quickly, Mal casts a glance over her shoulder to make sure she’s alone and unwatched before she creeps down the alley toward it, the melting snow cracking and crunching like tree bristles beneath her feet.

Slowly, she reaches for the edge of the tarp and lifts it up to peer inside, brow furrowing at what she finds.

Another scream escapes the now-billowing smoke from the burning building to her right, but it takes another glance at the duo of shopping carts beneath the tarp and an answering set of screams (two, three, god knows how many more) before Mal puts two and two together.

Forget careful: tonight she’s been downright _reckless_.

Tonight, it seems there’d been an entire godforsaken floor of homeless people camping out, trying to stay dry and warm and out of the winter snow, which means that the answering firefighters that are pulling up to the other side of the building aren’t just showing up to douse but _dive_ headfirst inside in an attempt to rescue those trapped inexplicably on the third floor. And _that_ means that Mal has not only caught people in her firetrap but also lured some in, and everything about this goes against her bottom line.

Marks, not murder.

This was never part of her plan.

(Mal will not take life when she gave it away so unwillingly, before.)

So she’s left with no other option than to fly back into the fray; she’s the one who made this mess, it should be her who unearths her unintended victims from beneath the rubble. Getting back up to the third floor proves to be surprisingly easy from the back of the building — the fire hasn’t spread quite that far yet, and the rescue squad hasn’t explored this option yet, still too focused on the fence the fire’s created along the front. The cloth on her face is doing little to help with all the smoke, but it’s necessary now — she can’t risk anyone getting a close enough look.

The three men she finds first are easy to direct out: two are a little older than her and one’s actually her age, and they’re close enough to the back stairwell that all it takes is grabbing the first one by the arm and turning him toward the exit, the others following suit quickly. The last one yells over his shoulder — _the girls are at the end of the hall_ — and Mal’s stomach sinks down to her knees like dead weight. Her head whips around quick, eyes searching for an open door at the other end of the building but the smoke is getting thicker, heat pulling sweat from her skin as the fire creeps closer. She has to lift an arm just to create some sort of barrier between her and the elements as she carefully makes her way down the hall, eyes squinting, trying to discern something, anything.

She’s three doors down when she finally hears the sound of someone screaming — _please, help!_ — and she’s at the end of the hall in the space of a heartbeat, hand carefully pushing the door open so as not to disrupt the structure. _Girls_ turns out to be relative: there’s a woman there who’s probably in her mid-twenties, maybe a good five years younger than Mal, her arm slung protectively around the shoulder of someone _much_ younger. _Girl_ feels more appropriate here: she’s a petite, baby-faced little thing, eyes not quite so hardened by life’s harsh hands; she can’t be more than eighteen, nineteen tops. Mal makes to scan the room quickly, just to see if there’s anyone else, but her gaze settles, falls down, and fixates on the younger girl’s middle.

She’s pregnant.

_Fuck_.

Mal beckons them over with a wave of her hand once they finally catch sight of her, has to gesture more forcefully when they hesitate. Slowly, they stalk their way across the room, clearly scared as they eye the wood glowing, bursting open orange through the far wall. She shouts over the roaring hiss-crackle-pop even as they pick up pace, a hand shoving gently at the elder girl’s back once they cross the threshold out into the hall. Mal brings up the rear as they move, swallows thickly as the older girl switches sides, putting her companion closer to the stairwell and away from the fire. 

(She has a brief thought, then, wonders if they knew each other before they found themselves without shelter, if they’re friends or sisters or lovers, but Mal quickly squashes the thought down — that’s the type of thinking that got her into this mess in the first place.)

The back door is clear on the bottom floor — she can see it from the top of the stairs — but the fire’s nearly upon them now, biting away at anything and everything solid. Quickly, she shoots out a hand to grab one of their shoulders, nodding them forward when they startle and stop to turn and look at her. Mal navigates them down the steps one at a time as _fast_ as she possibly can, careful with her steps and correcting course when there’s a too-ominous _creak_ beneath their feet.

They’re nearly there, a mere three steps from the bottom, when the fire turns wild. Mal feels it before she hears it or sees it, knees trying valiantly to absorb the vibrating shock as it ripples through the building, and in the split second before the world falls apart she sees the choice in front of her: her, or them. Without a second thought, she uses the hand on their shoulders and _shoves_ , ignoring the screams that follow as both women in front of her stumble, stagger, trip and fall and tumble the rest of the way down, over the threshold and across the finish line.

And then the fire _explodes_ above her, and Mal flies, falls face first into the hell below. She lands _hard_ , hears a crunch that’s not quite a crack and cries out, half-gasping in pain at the sharp stabbing sensation in her side. She tries to sit up but only manages to get halfway, pain flaring out over her abdomen. She halts, hesitates and grips gently over the affected area, hissing through her teeth as she slowly sits up the rest of the way. But she’s running out of time — the smoke is starting to slink back down, fire hot on its heels, and the cloth over her nose and mouth does absolutely _nothing_ to temper the thick, toxic air she sucks into her lungs with every breath. She nearly chokes on it, coughs with her whole body to the point of perpetuating the pain in her side and _fuck_ , she thinks she’s damaged at least one rib in some capacity, this is _bad_.

It’s only the sight of the broken, crumbling staircase before her that forces her to her feet, wood a gnarled, nasty mess as the flames slither, seeking out weakness to char and consume into oblivion. Her knees quake with her weight as she sways a little in place, blinking blearily as the earth echoes around her, ears ringing. Blindly, she reaches out with her free hand, fumbling to find purchase on anything not yet claimed by the fire, but each step has her stomach flipping in her throat as she stumbles in the direction of what she thinks — _hopes_ is the door.

She can hardly see straight once she emerges outside, nearly slips in the snow down the outside steps and only just manages to catch herself in time. What little cold she can feel against her exposed skin is a blessed relief, but she can’t afford to soak it up, not with the piercing wail of sirens on the other side of the building. Squinting, she can only just make out the last of the group rounding the corner toward the street on the other side of the building, and she thanks every last ounce of self-preservation those poor, unfortunate souls have for granting her grace right now.

Alone now, Mal swivels on the spot, facing the fire once more. Teeth gritted against the pain, she works as quickly as she can to divest herself of her guilt, wrenches off her backpack and tugs a zipper down lightning fast, practically ripping the lanyard bearing her license and keys from the front pocket and tossing them behind her onto the snow as far away from the building as possible. Into the encroaching fire the backpack goes, followed quickly by her beanie and the cloth over her face, and there is absolutely no time for her to dwell on the sheer irony of the fact that the fire has now claimed its maker’s means.

The hoodie comes off next, the act pulling at muscles around her injury and prompting an abandoned whimper to half-tumble from her lips, but it’s the pants that are the worst; she has to bend for those, has to tug and wiggle and awkwardly kick them off over her tennis shoes. Each additional movement builds upon the pain that was there before it, and by the time they’re off, she barely has the wherewithal to focus enough to toss them into the fire. And that’s it, that’s all the time she can afford to try and get rid of the evidence before she’s forced to turn on the spot once more, stumbling, half-slipping down the last few steps out into the night air.

She can still feel the heat of the fire behind her, smoke in her lungs and soot in her hair and sweat slick against her skin, but it’s nothing compared to what it was before, not now that she’s stripped down to the last of her layers, left with only her tank top and yoga pants and sneakers. Finally free, her legs give out at long last, body crumpling under her weight as she sinks into the snow, palms pressed hard against the ground. It has to be fucking freezing out here tonight, can’t be more than thirty degrees if the way her breath spirals like smoke in front of her is any indication, but she can’t feel any of it, can hardly register anything beyond the hammering drum of her heart in her chest, the sharp, buzzing ringing in her ears and the way her stomach sticks, shakes in her throat. It only takes one attempt at a deep breath for her lungs to protest, body wracked with coughs as she fights against the effects of all the smoke she’d inhaled, but that too works against her, pain lancing through her side again as whatever she’d injured threatens to rattle itself apart.

Together, it means she can hardly breathe, everything too tight to the point of pushing bile up into the back of her throat. She doesn’t vomit but it’s a near thing, and the way it lingers in the hollows of her throat has her head _pounding_ in agony. She squeezes her eyes shut, wills some part, any part of her body not to protest against her so violently, but even as she hangs her head ache blossoms anew, braid falling heavily over her shoulder and pulling painfully against the skin of her scalp. _Everything_ fucking hurts right now, right down to the edges of her nails, and with the last of her resolve evaporating, Mal’s arms quiver, buckle and bring her down the rest of the way, bracing her in a bed of snow.

And it’s almost… relief, that sensation, the sharp, stinging cold of frost nipping at her skin like a balm against the hell she’s just emerged from — a near-embrace, she thinks, from some twisted form of heaven. She can’t find it in her to _move_ , can’t even find the strength to cry, much less fight back tears, and the whole world fades into shadows, sirens turning to silver bells in song. She drifts — for how long, she’s not sure — before she makes any conscious recognition of something changing in her environment, and by the time she does, the shouting voices she’s barely able to discern are already upon her.

She winces slightly as they slowly shift her onto her back, licks her lips and swallows hard, parched beyond belief to the point where her resulting cough sounds like her lungs, her throat are made of smoldering sandpaper. Her breath feels burnt, barely there, and the noise she wants to make when she feels a set of hands press against her injury dies before she can even give it life, morphs itself into a muffled thing that has her writhing, twisting away. Another set of hands, two more, but these are more gentle as they try to keep her still. There are words there, too, murmured in a manner meant to soothe, but everything still feels, sounds murky, like she’s holding her breath underwater, playing a game of telephone.

(Her mind flits briefly to the girl, to the curve of her belly and the fear in her eyes, and for a minute the pain at Mal’s core recedes, dissipates into the background.)

She loses focus for a few minutes, she must, because her attention is pulled, caught by the fingertips brushing gently across her brow, punctuated by the prompting of her name on someone’s lips. _Mal_ , mumbled and too far (the fingers against her forehead brush her hair out of her face); _Mal_ , near but not close enough to touch (fingers fall, tips tracing along the length of her arm, touch warm); _Mal_ for the last time, imparted into her ear (and the fingers find hers and latch on, squeezing her subconscious back to the surface). It takes her several attempts to open her eyes properly — every part of her body feels _heavy_ — and probably a few moments more for reality to come into clarity, edges of her vision blurry and aglow and smattered with stars.

And then the world narrows down to the blue-gray of the sea after a storm, and Mal rises to the surface before drowning all the way back down.

“Hey,” Robin murmurs, corner of his mouth twitching up into a smile as his eyes flit over her face and _what is he even doing here_? “You still with us?” And she tries to answer, she does, but the words stick in her throat like glue, suppressed by smoke. It’s all she can do to keep her gaze focused at all, much less locked with his, and all at once she is swaying lying down, light-headed and longing for this wretched night to be over. She feels her eyes fluttering even as she fights to keep them open, and they slip shut one, two, three times, each one like a shutter capturing color on camera: red, and yellow, and blue.

Her one night stand, it seems, is a fucking _firefighter_.


End file.
